Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin - Change Maker - James Altucher Pt 2

Episode Date: September 3, 2021

Today’s episode is Part 2 of Nicole’s conversation with financial expert James Altucher. Last week, Nicole and James talked about making money. This week, they talk about losing money… and how to bounce back after financial stress. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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money is working as hard as you do. So why overcomplicate your money? Keep it simple with Bank of America, your one-stop shop for everything you need today and the goals you're working toward tomorrow. To get started, visit bofa.com slash newprosmedia. That's b-o-f-a dot com slash n-e-w pros p-r-o-s media. bfa.com slash newprosmedia. Hey guys, are you ready for some money rehab? Wall Street has been completely upended by an unlikely player, GameStop. And should I have a 401k? You don't do it? No, I never do it. You think the whole world revolves around you and your money.

Well, it doesn't. Charge for wasting our time. I will take a check. Like an old school check. You recognize her from anchoring on CNN, CNBC, and Bloomberg. The only financial expert you don't need a dictionary to understand. Nicole Lappin. As you know, here on Money Rehab, we feature changemakers,

public figures making change in every sense of the word, and along the way have been in or might still be in money rehab. Today, we're releasing the second part of my conversation with author and investor James Altucher. Last week, we talked about making money. Today, we're talking about losing money. Throughout his career, James has lost millions of dollars. And I don't know about you, but just thinking about that for a second makes my palms very sweaty. It's an important reality check for us to note. James comes from the world of finance, and even he has needed some money rehab. It is true that we all have money problems. And so today we'll be talking about how to gather the strength

to solve them. So here's the second part of my conversation with James. I think we've talked about this before because we've talked about so much and so many feelings and traumas and things over the years, because I think that really dictates a lot of our decisions later in life, unless you deal with them. But that's a whole other podcast. My boyfriend in high school said he wanted to be a hedge fund manager and I thought he wanted to be in gardening. So his Wall Street friends, he thought I couldn't hang out with them. So that's why he dumped me. Oh, no. I know. Why do you think you couldn't hang out with them? You're because I started as a poetry major in

college. I mean, I got into, as you know, financial news totally by accident. So like 10 years later, fast forward, all of his Wall Street friends wanted to hang out because I was anchoring on CNBC and they were like, you know, you know what in their basement to me or whatever. So yes, I'm like the brunette Elwood and thank you laughing last. But I had no idea. I mean, I grew up in an immigrant family, first generation American. Nobody learns this stuff in school. I was, again, a poetry major and hedge funds sounded like gibberish to me. And you know what? I have learned over the last 20 years a lot about Wall Street, a lot about finance, and it's still confusing. Yeah, it is confusing. And I don't that's why I want to say Wall Street is different from finance. I want to say Wall Street is different from finance. Like making good financial decisions in your life is not the same as, oh, you know, I'm in Wall Street.

Like they're two different things. As maybe your listeners may or may not know And I've gone dead completely broke after making those millions on many, not many occasions, but several, several occasions. And it's frustrating. I was really good at figuring out how to make money. I knew about business. I knew about money. I knew about investing and so on. But for a while, actually, when I was still learning about investing, I was really bad at holding onto my money. I would go broke all the time. There's three skills with money, making it, keeping it, growing it. So for a good 15 years, I was good at making it, but not at keeping it.

Or what about growing it? Well, I didn't even get to the growing it part. Well, maybe growing doesn't have to come last. It could be making it, growing it, and Well, maybe growing doesn't have to come last. It could be making it, growing it and then losing it. Yeah. Well, if you if you don't know how to grow it properly, that's the problem is that you'll lose it. So money is is is, you know, hard to make. And you you sweat and pour over making money and building a business and so on. And it's hard to grow and it's hard to keep. All of these skills are very difficult, is the problem. So you call that your year of stress.

I mean, I've had several years like that, but yeah, I've been so stressed as to be, it's beyond calculation how stressed I've been at different points in my life. You talk really openly about the feelings that you've had around money, making it, losing it and growing it and all parts in between. So you talk a lot about the $15 million that you earned and you lost. Yes. Well, I, so I had this company. I always wanted to be a writer since I was a kid.

And, but along the way, I also learned a lot about computer programming and other fun things. And I had a company in the 90s, made websites for entertainment companies and built it up. We had a good solid business, sold it. I made about $15 million on that, sold the business. And then I went totally broke. I knew nothing about investing. I was investing in just crazy shit all the time, like every day. Like, gosh, I don't know, just every like I invested in one company that was like a portal for charities. And I invested in another company that was this wireless app

that was long before wireless even existed for phones. I was just going crazy with investing. I would invest in everything. Because here's my problem. This was the evil problem, is that it wasn't about just making money money i really felt i really felt that i was poor now that here i had 15 million dollars in the bank i felt i was poor so it was like a psychological thing i honestly thought that i was the poorest person i knew and it was insane to think that way. But I thought that way. Listen, I have lots of weird money stuff that I talk about openly.

Or I think I'm going to be broke, alone, and homeless and die in the gutter. Regardless of how... I have plenty of money in my bank account. Like, mama rich bitch. But it has nothing to do with what's in my bank account. Like, the fear is going to exist if I have 10 gazillion dollars in my bank account. Doesn't matter. So you lost it. And then what happened? Well, I mean, I was so depressed because I thought to myself, you know, I'm not turns out I'm not a financial guy. I'm really just nothing. And I worked really hard to make this money. It was like a one time thing.

I won the lottery and I'm never going to make this money again. And that's just that. Like, I really I thought I'd ruin my kids future. I ruined my future. I was unemployable at this point. Like everyone thought I was a loser because I had lost all my money. So everyone I knew, I was suicidal. I thought it would be better for my kids. Because when I had a lot of money, I got myself a nice life insurance policy. I thought it would be better for my kids if I killed myself, you know, than if I lived. So I was trying to figure out how to kill myself. But I thought that the insurance companies wouldn't pay off the insurance policy if they knew I committed suicide. So I was always researching, like, how can I commit suicide without anybody knowing? And there's pretty much no way to do it.

And I didn't kill myself, but that's how depressed I was. And I couldn't get out of bed in the morning. I couldn't even understand what is it that makes people smile. Like, I couldn't understand, like like how to move those muscles anymore. Like it seemed inconceivable to me to smile. Like when you feel that depressed and when you feel suicidal, it's like life starts off as this giant funnel. And imagine like a marble, like at the top of the funnel and going down, you have your

choices get narrower and narrower and narrower until there's only one. You think there's only one way out, which is not true. There's many ways out. And what happened was is that it was kind of like just this odd thing. I bought a bunch of waiter's pads. I always like the look of waiter's pads. And I never slept because I was depressed. And so I would walk around like all night. I had these waiter's pads. I'd go into this, you know, cafe or coffee shop or whatever. And for whatever reason, I started, this is like my second year of depression. I started just writing down 10 ideas a day. Like I would write, oh, here's 10 books I can write.

Or here's 10 businesses I could potentially start. Or here's 10 investing strategies. Or here's 10 stocks., or here's 10 stocks. I write down 10 ideas a day. And after like a few, even weeks, but let's just say months of doing this, I realized I was like happier for some reason. And it was because like you start connecting all these neurons in your brain, you get like more creative, you have tons of ideas. And I realized, in your brain. You get like more creative. You have tons of ideas. And I realized, oh, you know, ideas are kind of like a muscle. And that if you don't exercise a muscle, then it'll atrophy.

It'll atrophy like pretty quickly. Like if you don't exercise your leg muscles, like if you just stay in bed for a year, you won't be able to walk and need physical therapy to walk. And the same thing happens with idea muscle. People think, oh, when I have a good idea, it'll just hit me like lightning and then I'll know. But it's not true. You have to really exercise the idea muscle. And so I started doing that and I started having like legitimately good ideas after

a few months of doing this. And so I started getting excited about life again. And then I started doing these ideas. this. And so I started getting excited about life again. And then I started doing these ideas. And it was still another six years before I built and sold another company. But I started making streams of income, five or six streams of income, because I would monetize all these different ideas. And at least I survived. But then I lost all my money again. I built and sold another company to the street.com and I lost all my money again and had to do it from scratch again. I mean, the first time I went from 15 million to $143 left in my bank account.

And the second time I went from about a similar amount to again, almost nothing. And I just always had to start. And it happened a third time as well. And I always had to just start from scratch. But the third time it happened, I had a lot of confidence in myself. So I didn't get as stressed. Hold on to your wallets, boys and girls. Money Rehab will be right back.

Now for some more Money Rehab. Wow. So what advice would you give to someone who feels like they lost everything or if they lost a significant amount of money or momentum in their career or they're feeling depressed because of financials or career or otherwise, what advice would you give them? I wouldn't give any advice. I would just say what happened to me. or career or otherwise, what advice would you give them?

I wouldn't give any advice. I would just say what happened to me. And what happened to me essentially was that I worked very hard at, I realized several things. One is if I'm not physically healthy, I'm not gonna be able to start another business. So I was by sleeping all day or not sleeping or not treating myself well, I wasn't being physically healthy. So there's no way to recover your money. You have zero chance if you're not physically

healthy. Then you have to be emotionally healthy. So when you're depressed, you're not necessarily emotionally healthy. And I was arguing with my wife and I lost all my friends and blah, blah, blah. And but also you have to be creatively healthy. You have you're not going to have a good idea if you to be creatively healthy. You're not going to have a good idea if you're sick in bed. You're not going to have a good idea if you're arguing with your spouse. But you're also not going to have a good idea if you don't have your idea muscle exercised. And so every day to this day, 20 years later, I write down 10 ideas a day. Not so much when I was at the height of COVID, but pretty much every other day. And it's really important no matter what. There's so many amazing things that have happened to me

because of that. For instance, one time I wrote, here's 10 things I think Amazon should do to make self-publishing a book easier. And I sent it just cold to Amazon. And Amazon was like, publishing a book easier. And I sent it just cold to Amazon. And Amazon was like the head of publishing or whatever at Amazon was like, oh, this is great. Hey, just to let you know, if you're ever in Seattle, stop by and we'll show you what we're working on. And I wrote back right away and I said, well, just so happens I'm going to be in Seattle next week. Can I stop by? Was that a lie? It was totally a lie. I was never I've never been to Seattle in my life at that point. And I had no plans to go to Seattle. Why would I go to Seattle?

And, but I bought a ticket right then. And I got a tour of, you know, all of Amazon and they showed me all these new products they were working on. And when I did publish books later, I would just call these people in the self-publishing division. They always helped me out, whatever I needed. It was, it was really fantastic. Like I was probably the first self-published book that they did hardcover. And whenever there's a new experimental program they're trying,

they always include me. Because of this 10 ideas a day, I've been invited to visit or speak or consult for Google, Amazon, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Quora, and tons of other companies. and tons of other companies. So another time, I wrote to a well-known radio personality slash influencer, here's 10 ideas for a book you should write. And he wasn't a writer. So he said, James, this is great. Can you write it for me? And you'll be a ghostwriter. I'm like, no, no, no, this is just 10 ideas for you. He convinced me over time that I should be involved in it. And we wrote this book together. It was him with me was him with me and audible. This is the book I published last, this past year with, with audible and it worked out great. So like just writing 10 ideas a day, it gets your brain moving. It gets all the creativity flowing. And again, it sounds corny,

but it exercises muscles, a very real muscle, this idea muscle. And people say, well, why would you share your ideas? Aren't you worried they're going to steal your ideas and not pay you? What if Amazon stole your ideas and not pay you? Fine. I don't care. The great thing about exercising your idea muscle is that you feel abundant in ideas. People do steal my ideas all the time.

No big deal. I have more ideas. I'm abundant. I have more ideas where that came from. I have better ideas than the one they stole. And if they stole it and it worked out for them, great. I probably wasn't going to do it anyway. You can't you can't execute on 3000 ideas a year. You're only going to execute on like one or two, maybe. Yeah, it seems like it's not necessarily what you do the most, but what you do consistently, even if it's a small thing. Yeah. And it's interesting about consistency because, you know, if something's not working, let's say you start a business and it's not working out. No problem. You just stop it.

The great the great thing also is, is that because you're going to be abundant ideas, you don't have not everything you do has to work out. It's not like you have to live or die on every single idea. So consistency is a weird thing because sometimes I'll work for a year on something. It didn't work out. I have to recognize it's not working out and I have to just move on. And some other people say, no, no, focus, man, persistence. That's what really makes you succeed. That's sort of true sometimes, but it's not true other times. Yeah, I think it's actually quite strong to know when it's time to stop. Yeah, I think that's a critical skill. And you kind of learn that through experience. But sometimes it's like a guessing game. And also, you have to be creative again.

Like you have to know, okay, this is not working out. But here's how I can transform this. You have to be kind of like an alchemist of creativity and, but here's how I can transform this. You have to be kind of like an alchemist of creativity and business. Here's how I can transform this idea so that I might not make millions, but at least I can get out of this and my dignity is intact and I can move on. And so there's been several situations like that

where I worked on something for years, wasn't working out, and then I just was able to salvage it. Well, I could talk to you forever and ever. And I'm so grateful for you opening up so honestly about the real deal of how you've been feeling through these ups and downs in the financial world. You know, as you know, my last book, my thesis essentially was that self-care is the biggest asset or liability in your career.

So it's really nice to hear you talk about the idea that it's correlated, even though you think it might not be, right? I remember one time I was really depressed because of money and I decided, okay, I'm gonna see a psychiatrist. And the psychiatrist said to me, well, what can I do for you? And I said, nothing.

And he said, no, seriously, what can I do for you? And I said, well, the only thing that will help me is if you give me a check for a million dollars. And he said, I have a feeling if I did that, it's not going to solve your problems. Now, money does solve your money problems temporarily at the very least, but it was probably a wise thing to say like i don't think my real problems were about money it was kind of the psychology around money and that's a difficult problem sometimes to solve yeah i think the whole uh think thin to be thin is bullshit like if you want to be get in shape go to the gym and stop eating as much but

i think when it comes to money, mindset is everything. And that's not a woo-woo cop out. I think that, you know, for me, you and I have talked about this too. I was seemingly on top of the world with my second book and New York Times bestseller and all this TV stuff and all of that. And I had a physical, emotional, mental breakdown that stemmed from burnout and an emergency admittance to the psych ward. And at 2am, my shrink and my assistant were canceling everything on my schedule. And at that point, nothing mattered. Like, how much I networked, how many books I read, how I invested. My whole schedule was canceled. Everything stopped because I wasn't doing okay. And I think a lot of people say, well,

whatever. After I get through this deal, I'll eat healthy. I'll work out, blah, blah, blah. But chaos is a game of whack-a-mole. There's always some other shit. And I think it's directly related. And in your career, you first have to realize if your self-care is on point or not, because I think it can bring you to rock bottom like it did for me, or it can bring you more success than you imagine if you are consistent with it. For me, I've seen that firsthand. I've seen it on both sides. I've seen it help me become more successful when I've really like not not drank, done gratitude journaling every day. It sounds like not related to, you know, economics or any of that stuff. Right. But it's helped me make more money than any of that other stuff. Truly. And it happens gradually. It's not like a get rich quick scheme being healthy,

but it really works. And you also have to have like a sense of, I don't want to say a sense of humor about it because it's really scary. I'm still scared all the time, but like, you know, even though I've done well, like this, like I almost have like PTSD from going broke so many times. And, you know, like, I almost have like PTSD from, from going broke so many times.

And, uh, you know, I think I'll always be anxious my whole life. That's just me. But, uh, it does, it does work to, to take care of yourself. And you have to have a sense of like absurdity. You have to have know that look life short, all these people work so hard, all their lives, and then they just die. Like, what was it all for? Which is almost like a cliche to say it that look, life's short, all these people work so hard all their lives, and then they just die. Like, what was it all for? Which is almost like a cliche to say it that way, but it's true. Yeah, you and I are allergic to cliches generally, which is one of the many things I love about you. But yeah, you don't want to necessarily just work to be the richest dude or gal in the cemetery. No, I mean, how many people do you know that, oh, they finally like sold their company and then they died?

Yeah. Or, you know, I talk about this in my next book, you know, Kate Spade. And I don't know if you've met her, too. But you look at folks like that and you think money buys you happiness. It doesn't. You know, it can buy you therapy, which is great. And so I'm all about buying therapy, buying a trip to Bali or whatever that's going to help you. But you have to do the work from there.

For today's tip, you can take straight to the bank. Regardless of what your goals are, you need a mentor to help you get there. Just like it takes a village to raise a child, it takes a community to climb the steps of money rehab. The stress of going through financial hardship is too much to bear on your own. Look into finding someone you can call when you need some emotional support or when you might be making a big financial decision. Everyone needs a sympathetic ear and a sounding board. Don't try to go through it alone. Find someone perhaps in your industry that you look up to and reach out. If you need any tips on how to get the mentor of your dreams, you can also listen to Money

Rehab episode 36 on how to tie the mentorship knot. Money Rehab is a production of iHeartMedia. I'm your host, Nicole Lappin. Our producers are Morgan Lavoie and Catherine Law. Money Rehab is edited and engineered by Brandon Dickert with help from Josh Fisher. Executive producers are Mangesh Hatikader and Will Pearson. Huge thanks to the OG Money Rehab supervising producer, Michelle Lanz, for her pre-production and development work. producer Michelle Lanz for her pre-production and development work. And as always, thanks to you for finally investing in yourself so that you can get it together and get it all.